Diastasis Recti and the Healing Journey
Post-pregnancy real talk for a second.
The Linea Alba is a fibrous tissue that runs vertically through your mid-section between the two sides of your rectus abdominis muscle. It stabilizes and balances the muscles attached to it.
During pregnancy the Linea Alba stretches, and in many cases doesn't return to pre-pregnancy form on it's own. This is called diastasis recti.
It varies in severity from person to person and can be measured by examining how many fingers can fit in the gap between the two sides of the rectus abdominis muscles.
The effects of this separation ranges, but for me personally it's the main cause of retaining the look of a baby belly, contributes to lower back pain because of the weakness in my abdominal wall and that same weakness causes the need to move and engage differently during every day movements. For example, if I'm laying on my back, I don't have the ab strength to just sit right up, I need to roll over on my side. I also can't perform some ab exercises.
A big part of my focus of healing my body this year is improving this separation and strengthening my abdominal wall and pelvic floor. I went to a pelvic floor physiotherapist this week and my separation is about 3.5 fingers wide. It was about 2.5-3 fingers wide after my first pregnancy.
The physiotherapist gave me some stretches and connective breathing and engagement exercises to do and I will continue to see her weekly. I have confidence that this will heal and my strength will improve.
But what's most important is the change in how I view my body. My inner monologue the last year has generally consisted of words like "fat", "lazy", "out of control", "inconsistent", and "discouraged". Yeah, real talk.
But as I've checked in with myself, I've realized those words are not only not helpful, they're also not true and don't tell the whole story.
Yes, in order to see healing and change, my habits need also need to change. But those words certainly did not motivate me to make those changes.
Once I changed those thoughts and feelings (over time, slowly and with practice), this magical thing started happening: I started actually making the practical changes I needed to. I started working out consistently, I started implementing the eating habits I’d planned on for months and I built habits around the prime times of my day: first thing in the morning and right before bed.
My habits and the imbalances in my body weren't serving me. But neither was talking negatively to myself. When I shifted my focus to the lifestyle I wanted to live, the things I wanted to spend my time and energy on, and a mentality of healing rather than "losing weight", that's when I actually made the changes I needed to.
I’m not done. There’s still more work to do. But I’m in a much better mental, emotional and spiritual space to do that work. And I’m seeing the physical fruits of hat mental shift, and it’s really exciting!
More to come…